Saturday, December 27, 2008

Pinyon Jays

I noticed a flash of blue out the living room window yesterday morning and found a bright pinyon jay livening up the evergreen foliage. Pinyon jays usually travel in flocks, and sure enough, as I watched I saw many more pinyon jays. These flocks can consist of up to 500 pinyon jays, and many jays stay in the same flocks for their entire lives. Pinyon jays are only found in the western United States.

These social birds eat pine seeds, and they don't have any feathers at the base of their bills. This enables them to poke their bills deep into pine cones and not get any annoying sap on themselves. Each pinyon jay collects thousands of pine seeds each year, caching and remembering where they are for later months. They have such good memories they can even find the seeds under snow. If only I could remember where I put things around the house!

Your days of knowing where things were around the house ended first when you got married and then were solidified when you had Desert Boy...;) You'll never know where anything is again...lol It's never where you left it and if/when you find it, it's never in a place you'd have thought to put it.

About Me

Hi! I'm Gretchen, an ecologist, rancher's wife, mother, writer, and dreamer. I've lived and worked in three of the four North American deserts and visited the fourth. This blog is about what it's like to live in the rural high desert on a ranch, spending lots of time outdoors with kids, and our journey to live more sustainably. To learn more about the area, click here. If you'd like to contact me, leave a comment (I love comments!) or email me at desertsurvivor @ live.com.